Monday, March 08, 2004

Holy Schamoley!!!!!! My eyes can not believe it. The New York Times, in a rate one two punch, just broke the mold on its usual reporting. First we have a story on Hollywood Hypocrasy and now comes this report of a Womens, yes thats right Womens rifle club in Manhattan.

What is going on with the world? For instance, we get quotes like this:

New York is not a gun town. With some of the toughest gun laws in the country, it can take upward of 18 months to get a license for your longarm, even if the most you care to do is head upstate for a weekend turkey shoot.

There is, though, a small but enthusiastic shooting culture in the city, and one place to find its members is at meetings of the Women's Shooting Sports League, which gathers the first Monday of each month in Chelsea for a night of rifle fire and female bonding.

And admissions like this

Ms. Cohen said she considered shooting a precision art form, much like darts, and found her time with the Ruger an "almost Zen sort of thing." Although she said that politics were far from her mind when she joined, she discovered that the task of getting licensed was much more difficult than she had thought.

While filling out her license application at police headquarters, she was surprised to find that the authorities wished to know if she had ever seen a psychiatrist or taken narcotics. She said the process was more intrusive than her application to the state bar association.

"They asked all these probing personal questions that didn't necessarily prove that I, as a thinking person, could or couldn't handle a gun," she said.

And leaves us with images like this:

If it is tricky to imagine some Manhattan publicist in miniskirt and leather boots taking target practice with a Ruger .22, consider what Ms. Heath's relations in Michigan think about her current home.

And concludes with this:

"People who perhaps have never had the opportunity to enjoy the shooting sports should have that opportunity," he said, quickly adding, "without any preconceived notions."

Notions are one thing; politics is another. It seemed as if the women of the shooting league had simpler things in mind.

"Oh, yeah, I had a great time," one young woman said coming off the line. "I shot some balloons."